Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies »

Two Worlds, One Philosophical Cradle:
Scholar Explores Hidden Kinship Between Eastern and Western Culture in Revolutionary Study;
In the Early Days, Ideas Traveled Freely Between India and Greece.

New York, NY, May 2002. A revolutionary study by the classical philologist and art historian Thomas McEvilley is about to challenge much of academia. In The Shape of Ancient Thought, an empirical study of the roots of Western culture, the author argues that Eastern and Western civilizations have not always had separate, autonomous metaphysical schemes, but have mutually influenced each other over a long period of time. Examining ancient trade routes, imperialist movements, and migration currents, he shows how some of today's key philosophical ideas circulated and intermingled freely in the triangle between Greece, India, and Persia, leading to an intense metaphysical interchange between Greek and Indian cultures.

As the author explains it, "The records of caravan routes are like the philosophical stemmata of history, the trails of oral discourses moving through communities, of texts copied from texts. . . .What they reveal is not a structure of parallel straight lines-one labeled 'Greece,' another 'Persia,' another 'India'-but a tangled web in which an element in one culture often leads to elements in others."

While scholars have sensed a philosophical kinship between Eastern and Western cultures for many decades, The Shape of Ancient Thought is the first study to provide the empirical evidence. Covering a period ranging from 600 B.C. until the era of Neoplatonism and a geographical expanse reaching across the ancient world, McEvilley explores the key philosophical paradigms of these cultures, such as Monism, the doctrine of reincarnation in India and Egypt, and early Pluralism in Greece and India, to reveal striking similarities between the two metaphysical systems. Based on 30 years of intense intellectual inquiry and research and on hundreds of early historical, philosophical, spiritual, and Buddhist texts, the study offers a scope and an interdisciplinary perspective that has no equal in the scholarly world.

With a study like The Shape of Ancient Thought, students and scholars of history, philosophy, cultural studies, and classics will find that their field has been put on entirely new footing. Yet as editor Bill Beckley points out, the merits of this work reach into a broader social context: "More recently, events have leant an unexpected urgency to the [book] by focusing the world's attention on Afghanistan (ancient Bactria), where much of the story unfolds in this volume, and where the difficult karma of cross-cultural contacts is still alive."

	Editor's Introduction
	Acknowledgments
	Preface
	A Note on Citations, Translations, and Transliterations
	A Note on Sanskrit Pronunciation
	List of Abbreviations Used in the In-Text References and Endnotes
	List of Illustrations
	List of Maps
	Foreword: History: Competition or Collaboration?
Ch. 1	Diffusion Channels in the Pre-Alexandrian Period	1
Ch. 2	The Problem of the One and the Many	23
Ch. 3	The Cosmic Cycle	67
Ch. 4	The Doctrine of Reincarnation	98
Ch. 5	Platonic Monism and Indian Thought	157
Ch. 6	Platonic Ethics and Indian Yoga	177
Ch. 7	Plato, Orphics, and Jains	197
Ch. 8	Plato and Kundalini	208
Ch. 9	Cynics and Pasupatas	225
Ch. 10	Five Questions Concerning the Ancient Near East	237
Ch. 11	The Elements	300
Ch. 12	Early Pluralism in Greece and India	311
Ch. 13	Skepticism, Empiricism, and Naturalism	325
Ch. 14	Diffusion Channels in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods	349
Ch. 15	Dialectic Before Alexander	403
Ch. 16	Early Greek Philosophy and Madhyamika	419
Ch. 17	Pyrrhonism and Madhyamika	450
Ch. 18	The Path of the Dialectic	491
Ch. 19	The Syllogism	510
Ch. 20	Peripatetics and Vaisesikas	519
Ch. 21	The Stoics and Indian Thought	540
Ch. 22	Neoplatonism and the Upanisadic-Vedantic Tradition	549
Ch. 23	Plotinus and Vijnanavada Buddhism	568
Ch. 24	Neoplatonism and Tantra	585
Ch. 25	The Ethics of Imperturbability	595
	Afterword: Remarks toward a Conclusion	642
App. A	The Aryans	657
App. B	The Aryan Invasion	663
App. C	Black Athena and Western Xenophobia	666
App. D	The Golden Thigh	668
App. E	Philosophy and Grammar	672
	List of Works Cited	678
	Index	703